Med-Expansions

med-expansions

by Cillian Scott

Systematically formatted triggers for medical writing and notetaking

MedicalWritingNotetaking
espanso install med-expansions

<h1 align="center"> Med-Expansions <br></br> </h1> <h4 align="center">A comprehensive and systematic set of keyboard expansions for medical note-taking using Espanso</h4> <p align="center"> <a href="#install">Install</a> • <a href="#demo">Demo</a> • <a href="#key-features">Key Features</a> • <a href="#how-to-use">How To Use</a> • <a href="#credits">Credits</a> • <a href="#license">License</a> </p>

Install

`espanso install med-expansions`

Demo

screenshot

Key Features

  • Systematic
    • forget remembering complicated triggers
    • Simple rules yield consistent results.
  • Cut down on typing
    • Medical terminology is often painfully protracted to type, often for no good reason, if you need to type supraventricular tachycardia often, you're going to love this package.
  • We have it all covered
    • Viruses, fungi, pathology, clinical terminology, everything medical, we've got it down†.
  • Cross platform
    • Windows, macOS and Linux enabled, thanks to Espanso

this is totally a lie (for now)

How To Use

Legend:

  • SPC refers to the spacebar
RULE #1
If the expansion is a common acronym*, the trigger is the acronym followed by a trailing .

e.g — (ACS, BP, HTN), triggers are:

  • acs. → acute coronary syndrome
  • bp. → blood pressure
  • htn. → hypertension
  • If the expansion is not referred to by its acronym (like jp → J-point), a trailing . is not required
    • Press SPC after typing the . and the trigger will expand.
RULE #2
If the expansion is a medical term with multiple syllables* , the trigger is the first LETTER followed by the first THREE letters of the first distinguishing syllable.

e.g — (pneumothorax, cardiomegaly, pleural effusion), triggers are:

  • ptho → pneuomothorax

  • cmeg → cardiomegaly

  • peff → pleural effusion

  • "Distinguishing syllable" in this context refers to the first syllable that distinguishes the word from other words. This means that cardiomegaly has a trigger of cmeg, as opposed to cdio, because many words will have a first letter of c and second syllable starting with "dio".

    • This sounds complicated but 95%+ of the time, it is extremely intuitive and will probably be what rolls off your tongue naturally
    • Cardiac tamponade is ctam, pleural effusion is peff, rhabdomyolysis is rmyo etc.
    • Why do it this way? It's the way we most naturally think of shorthand terms, think about afib and vfib, which follow this rule.
  • Where this rule is not possible to follow, which is rare, a common sense alternative is used

    • If rule #1 or #2 (whichever not first applied) can be used, and a common-sense/intuitive alternative exists, BOTH will be valid triggers. Otherwise, ONLY the intuitive trigger is valid
      • An effort is made to document exceptions with comments (lines above the trigger line marked with a #) in the .yml files
RULE #3

For bacteria / fungi, the following is always a valid trigger (except in salmonella enteritidis and Bacillus anthracis)

First letter of genus followed by first three letters of species followed by SPC
  • Where an intuitive expansion exists that does not follow the above, both are valid triggers

    • e.g — While the rule for Haemophilus influenzae is hinf (first letter of Haemophilus is H, first three letters of influenza is inf). But "hflu" is the most reasonable trigger here
    • So, in this case (and in similar cases), both "hflu" and "hinf" are both valid triggers

    Exceptions are the following working triggers Senter → Salmonella enteritidis and banth → Bacillus anthracis

RULE #4a
For Viruses, if the virus is one or two short syllables followed by virus (e.g togavirus), the trigger is simply the first syllable followed by v
RULE #4b
For viruses with multiple syllables, the trigger is the first letter, followed by the first two letters from the next distinguishing syllable followed by v
* `omyv → Orthomyxovirus`
* `crov → Coronaviridae` 
	* **Plurals**: adding two `v`'s at the end will yield the plural form
    * `crovv → Coronaviridae`
    * For ease of use, and for consistency, *in future*, simply applying **rule #2** alone and adding a trailing v will trigger the expansion (i.e — `Orthomyxovirus` will be triggered by `omyv` as per **rule #4b** and `omyx` as per **rule #2** and `omyxv` as a fallback)
	

ᵃ — * For short viruses obeying rule #4a, which are on the border between 4a and 4b, both triggers will be valid.

Some notable exceptions:

Exception #1
Common shorthand follows a simple rule, take the common shorthand and append a trailing "." and press SPC
  • E.g:
    • tx. → treatment. hx. → history.
      • etc.
    • qds. → four times daily
    • 4/12. → four month
    • hb. → haemoglobin
      • etc.
    • a. → artery
    • as. → arteries
      • etc.

Credits

This software uses the following open source packages:

License

GNU GPLv3


Cillian Scott • GitHub @CillySu • E-mail: scottci@tcd.ie